Sometime in the month of July, 1812, nearly a hundred years ago now, a well dressed, smooth spoken man, less than thirty years of age, made his appearance at Windsor, Nova Scotia. The story as told in subsequent pages by Sheriff Bates is unique in criminal annals and is worthy of careful perusal. - Summary Adapted from the Preface

Miss Mitton was an unusual English woman of her time. As a published author, this unmarried woman in her early 30s recorded her visit to Burma at the turn of the 20th century. Her language is picturesque, and her attitude toward the natives of this country is typical of her era. Burma of the early 1900s was, and still is, a little known and underappreciated destination for those who love to wander the world. Anyone interested in Edwardian travel, attitudes, and women's issues during the Edwardian colonial period will enjoy this travelogue.

The Sager family, including seven children, set out on the Oregon trail in 1844. Accidents and disease made it a dangerous trip, and both parents died along the way. The orphans made it to the Whitman Mission in Walla Walla, Washington, but their lives were still in jeopardy. In 1847, members of the Cayuse tribe attacked the mission and killed the Whitmans and others living there. Catherine was among those who were taken as hostages, and she survived the massacre. She later wrote about these harrowing experiences in this memoir.

Brief journal sketches from France during WW1. The author was was American, but went on to spend much of her life in France. - Summary by kathrinee

Arthur Young, an English agriculturist, set out to write a travelogue on the state of agriculture in France and found himself in the midst of the French Revolution. His report on life in the capital and in the countryside in the years 1787, 1788, and 1789, replete with droll traveler's mishaps, becomes an eyewitness account of a society on the brink of catastrophe. From the court scene at Versailles to backroads villages comes this astonishing record of unfolding events, conspiracy theories about the queen, jubilation, and mass hysteria.

"Days with Walt Whitman" is a contemplative summary of the life of Walt Whitman and the making of the poet, by one of his followers. Edward Carpenter collected a half dozen essays he had written about different aspects of the American poet's work and habits. The essays have an ecstatic but grounded style, elevating Whitman to immortality, and showcasing Carpenter's familiarity with ancient Sanskrit texts. - Summary by Czandra

Arthur Conan Doyle first published his memories of his many various adventures around the world and his relationships with such famous figures of the age including Oscar Wilde, Empress Eugenie and Prime Minister Arthur Balfour to name a few, in The Strand Magazine between October 1923 and July 1924. This memoir was later formed into a book and published in September 1924.

This 1923 memoir of a World War I soldier is a well written much respected first-hand account of the brutal fighting in the last year of the war. - Summary by David Wales

A memoir of a young woman, who lived in the late 19th century in the United States. Starting with her pastoral youth and progressing through to her studies to become a doctor at Boston University, this is a frank and refreshing portrait of a young American girl’s upbringing; the impressions made upon her at a young age, the navigation through adolescence, and the determination of an emerging adult woman. Told with a sense of humor, wonder and delight. - Summary by Phyllis Vincelli

Station Amusements in New Zealand is a collection of vignettes about life on a sheep station in colonial New Zealand during the 1860s and is a further embellishment of events presented in Mary Anne Barker’s first book "Station Life in New Zealand". Mary Anne Barker and her husband Frederick Broomie lived at their sheep station “Broomielaw” under the foothills of the Southern Alps of Canterbury, New Zealand for three years from 1865 – 1868. Mary Anne Barker wrote in Chapter I: “I purpose therefore in these sketches to describe some of the pursuits which afforded us a keen enjoyment at the time, --an enjoyment arising from perfect health, simple tastes, and an exquisite climate...

Frances Power Cobbe was an important Irish-Anglo writer, suffragist, anti-vivisectionist, philosopher, and reformer of the mid to late 1800s. She is best known for her campaigns for women's rights , and against wife abuse and vivisection. She was the lifelong partner of Welsh sculptor Mary Lloyd. This autobiography was written very late in her life, and published shortly after her death. - Summary by Ciufi Galeazzi

The great Canadian journalist and humorist ruminates and reflects upon his life and calling in this 1924 little gem. - Summary by david wales

Sarah Bernhardt was a popular French actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was one of the first actresses to make the transition to The Silver Screen. She was renowned for her beauty. Here we have her autobiography presented in English. It is also available in French in our catalog. - Summary by Lynne Thompson

Rex Brasher is best known for his having painted in watercolor a complete set of all the extant American birds during his lifetime. This is a collection of his writing that serves as a kind of memoir. These are set on his 150-acre farm purchased in 1911 and never developed in his lifetime beyond a simple house and an outbuilding or two. - Summary by KevinS

The author of this work was the daughter of the British ambassador to Russia. She was in St. Petersburg from before World War I to after the Bolshevik Revolution, leaving in January 1918. Rather than a dry retelling of the history of this period, the author gives a more personal view of the events, as she lived through them. - Summary by TriciaG

Take a fascinating journey from France to America through the "eyes" of a pocket handkerchief. She marvels at the vastness of the universe which the Creator devised and glories in her own fabrication by the young hands of a French peasant. All the while, she sees the intricacies of Providence in her life, as well as those about her.

This recording comprises two narratives. One is by Cora Mitchel who in 1861 was a girl in her mid-teens. Her Unionist family escaped the Confederacy from their home in south Georgia to Rhode Island. This is her story written about 1916. The second narrative is by Charlotte St. Julien Ravenel of South Carolina, a contemporary journal written in the closing months of the civil war in 1865. - Summary by David Wales

Elizabeth Banks was an American journalist and author. She grew up in Wisconsin, then lived in England the last forty years of her life. She became a regular contributor to English publications such as The Daily News, Punch, St James' Gazette, and London Illustrated. She created a sensation by recording her observations on the plight of the lower classes, which she researched posing as a housemaid, street sweeper, and Covent Garden flower girl. Her later journalistic writings promoted women's right to vote and denounced prison conditions for jailed suffragettes...

In between "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Herland , feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote and published this delightful fictional autobiography, Benigna Machiavelli , in her monthly magazine, The Forerunner. The narrator, young Benigna MacAvelly, decides as a child that she intends to emulate her ancestor Niccolò Machiavelli but dedicate her machinations to doing good rather than evil. She starts her ingenious plotting very early in life , and moves on to larger goals as she gets older. Her most significant challenge is her domineering father...

Colonel Archibald Gracie was the first survivor of the sinking of the Titanic to die, and this first-hand account was published posthumously. He attempts to dispel some of the rumors surrounding the tragic event and gives his personal observations and an account of his survival clinging to the hull of an overturned collapsible lifeboat after helping many others to escape safely. A large portion of the book is given to personal accounts of other survivors from both the American and British boards of inquiry, boat by boat. - Summary by Larry Wilson

"From May 1945 until February 1946, I served as a Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Officer in Germany. During the first four months of this assignment, I was engaged in field work which included the recovery of looted works of art from such out-of-the-way places as a monastery in Czechoslovakia, a salt mine in Austria, and a castle in Bavaria. Later, as Deputy Chief of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section, Office of Military Government, U. S. Zone, I participated in the restitution of recovered art treasures to the countries of rightful ownership...

A travelogue of a trip through New Zealand in 1885 with panegyric descriptions of the scenery, elucidations of the progress the country had made since the writer had been there twenty years earlier, encomiums on the differences between New South Wales and New Zealand, and the writer's thoughts on where the two colonies needed to progress in the areas of agriculture, mining, forestry and education. Chapter 20 outlines a brief visit to Hobart on the way home, while the Appendix covers some statistics on the forestry industry in New Zealand and concludes with descriptions of the eruption of Tarawera in June 1886 as reported by the Sydney newspapers.

Romantic history of the fictional Don Sebastian, which was suggested to the author by a plaque commemorating a mysterious "Portuguese stranger". There is a historical backdrop, but the story itself and the characters are figments of her imagination. - Summary by Lynne T

Elizabeth Banks was an American journalist who, at about age 23, moved to London. While trying to break into English journalism and to keep the wolf from the door, she struck upon the idea of hiring out as a housemaid in some London household and writing about her experiences. Subsequently, she became a street sweeper, flower-seller, and a laundress. On the flip side, she advertised as an heiress and demonstrated how easy it was for a wealthy American to "buy a pedigree" and entry into the higher social circles...